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Friday, June 20, 2014

LXLE 14.04 Review: The best LXDE distro I've used till date

LXLE's USP in previous releases used to be Lubuntu with long term support, as Lubuntu didn't have a LTS spin till recently. And hence, the acronym LXLE from Lubuntu eXtra Life Extension. However, in 2014 with Lubuntu itself releasing an LTS version, I wanted to check how LXLE can entice users to continue using it over Lubuntu. As Ronnie Whisler's release notes states, it is time for the distro to evolve:

"LXLE acronym change, originally 'Lubuntu eXtra Life Extension' which made sense before Lubuntu had an official LTS release, since 14.04 however, LXLE will now adopt the nomenclature 'LXDE eXtra Luxury Edition' and we think this release doubles down on that; to better support 32-bit hardware we updated 12.04.4 to be virtually identical to LXLE 14.04 64-bit release including features, updated software and system components; PCManFM additions such as open directories and text as root, create shortcuts, rename base icon names, copy to folder, right click desktop trash to empty; Launch (Fehlstart), Run (Gexec), and Terminal (RoxTerm) all have hotkeys enabled to open them using the keyboard for faster access...."

On 14th June, 2014, LXLE released it's 64-bit spin, LXLE 14.04. There is no 32-bit spin yet. I guess I can understand the reason why these days even lightweight operating systems prefer 64-bit OS over 32-bit. Just check any e-commerce site for low budget laptops, you'll see the market is flooded with Windows 8 laptops under $500 with Intel Celeron/Pentium/Atom processors and under 4 GB RAM. I could not install 32-bit version in Secureboot and UEFI enabled systems. However, 64-bit worked with elan. Possibly, these distros are targeting users who bought these modern low powered systems but will soon get tired of Windows 8's crazy desktop and switch to Linux. I know quite a few people did it, even I did it myself!

Anyway, coming back to the topic, I downloaded the 64-bit ISO, about 1.5 GB in size. I created a live USB with Linux Mint Image Writer and booted it on my test laptop, Asus K55VM. LXLE 14.04 ships with LXDE desktop with Linux kernel 3.13.0 and PCManFM 1.2.0bas the default file manager. It is based on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr, the recently released LTS spin with 5 years of support. I am not sure if the support on LXLE 14.04 is also 5 years just like it used to be earlier or is it 3 years like Lubuntu 14.04.

Everything on my laptop worked as expected including WIFI, LAN, touch pad, screen resolution, sound card (sound was very good on the Altec Lansing speakers), etc. I didn't have to do any manual intervention at all with LXLE. Unlike Lubuntu, the Wifi bug is taken care of in LXLE, thankfully!

Further, the installation process recognized my graphic card and installed Nvidia-prime. At the first boot, I had to change settings from Nvidia graphic card as default to Intel graphics, log-out and log-in again to make it work. It is definitely user-friendly for the users who are not sure of the graphic card in their system or unaware what approach to take, to later regret about Linux causing a lot of heat and draining out batteries from their system. My laptop offered zero heat performance after switching to Intel graphics.

LXLE ships with an attractive LXDE desktop with semi-transparent panel, left hand side docky, cool looking conky showing system info and attractive wallpapers, an interface similar to the previous release.

The menu is simple like Lubuntu and very functional. It has some shortcuts in the menu like Alt+z for Application launcher, Alt+x to launch terminal, etc. which is not there in Lubuntu.

LXLE ships with 100 attractive wallpapers to choose from. Also, there is an app, Random wallpaper, clicking which changes the wallpaper to a random one. It is not as functional as variety but is less irritating; unless clicked, the wallpaper stays the same in Random wallpaper.

In addition to the regular icons in the panel, like volume control, Network, time and recycle bin, LXLE has a control to show/hide the conky and another weather application. I found the weather application pretty appealing. However, the battery icon is not there by default in the panel but it can be added.

Another interesting feature is in the top panel of application interface - there are options to make the app visible on all workspaces, roll up / roll down and decorate/undecorate to remove this option. Pretty interesting indeed.

Definitely it is not an application collection for low resource systems. It seems that LXLE's target group is not antiquated P4 systems but rather low powered advanced Win 8 systems or full fledged powerful gaming laptops. I spotted a few interesting apps in LXLE, which I marked in bold in the app list. Of these, Gitso is a frontend to reverse VNC connections. It is meant to be a simple two-step process that connects one person to another's screen. It is available for Mac and Windows as well and can be an excellent option for professional use.

Multimedia codecs and Adobe flash are in built in the distro and I could readily enjoy movies, YouTube videos in LXLE, even in the live boot.

For applications like LibreOffice or uget, LXLE has ppa's of Launchpad repositories and hence, offer more updated version than Ubuntu LTS distros or Trusty repos. Further, 32 bit architecture is also there in LXLE and programs dependent on 32 bit architecture like Adobe Acrobat reader, Skype, etc. can be installed and used in LXLE without any additional headache.

In addition, LXLE ships with a whole lot of games and Steam for avid gamers. I am not a big user of games and hence, skipping it from my review.

Like Lubuntu, the settings options are discrete and it doesn't have an integrated settings manager, as you see in PCLinuxOS LXDE or ROSA LXDE. However, there is an LXSession Configuration which works pretty good in selecting applications for autostart, changing default applications, reloading core packages, etc.

I specially like the addition of trusted Launchpad ppa's for applications like VLC (though the VLC player is not pre-installed), Libreoffice, Claws mail, etc. and even Kubuntu backports (I didn't get the reason of including Kubuntu backports!). I guess only the GIMP ppa is missing, which I added post installation. These ppa's ensure that the important packages stays updated to the latest stable version and not get antiquated quickly. For example, if you haven't added LibreOffice ppa, I guess you would be using the 4.2.3.3 version; however, LXLE has more updated 4.2.4.2 version of LibreOffice.

LXLE, even with all the tweaks and packages, gave performance comparable to Lubuntu. At steady state, LXLE consumes about 245 MB RAM and 0-5% CPU with task manager running. Under similar circumstances, Lubuntu 14.04 consumed about 230 MB RAM. LXLE takes about 56% lower RAM than average KDE distros and 37% lower than average GNOME distros, under identical condition and measured on the same laptop during 2013-14.

However, LXLE took a bit of more time to boot with autologin enabled, at 41 seconds. Lubuntu took about 26 seconds. Possibly all the tweaks are showing impact in time to boot.

Operating System (64 bit)

Size of ISO (GB)

Desktop

Linux kernel

CPU (%)

RAM usage (MB)

Size of installation (GB)

Boot time (sec)

Lubuntu 14.04 LTS

0.7

LXDE

3.13.0

0-5%

230

3.2

26

LXLE 14.04

1.5

LXDE

3.13.0

0-5%

245

6.9

41

However, even the high boot time for LXLE is 20% lower than the average boot time for KDE distros (51 seconds) and almost equal to GNOME 3 (42 seconds).

Boot time

Average (sec)

Best (sec)

KDE4

51

35

GNOME

42

22

LXLE 14.04

41

Otherwise, the distro is very smooth to use and in my usage, it was totally without any issue. Everything worked as expected and I feel LXLE is perfect for production purposes.

Score for Performance: 8/10

Overall

As expected, LXLE 14.04 is another beautiful release with lots of tweaks in it to ensure it looks attractive, works beautifully and stays more updated than the parent distro Lubuntu 14.04 LTS. In my rating as well, LXLE scored higher than or equal to Lubuntu in all departments, except performance. It is because of the higher boot time. Otherwise, the distro is a strong candidate for daily production use and those who are looking for a lightweight distro for gaming can definitely try out LXLE. I haven't tried out Linux gaming seriously yet, but may be I should try with LXLE. I am keeping this distro for sure.

You can get the 64 bit version from here. I hope the 32-bit version comes out soon, I guess a lot of users with 32-bit systems are eagerly waiting for this release.

Hallo everyone, i'm still using LXDE previous version, but i think that LXDE is the best distro i've used till today. I was a distro-hopper, and only Debian 7.0 was a distro that i've used for over three months. Today is four months that i use LXDE!I love this Linux distro, and i suggest it to everyone!Thanks a lot to the developers :-)

Is the application launcher that is in your first photo included in the distribution or did you have to install it separately? By the way, I enjoy your reviews and like your rating system. Keep up the good work.

32bit revisited is based on 12.04.4 but with all the updates of 14.04 including updated software and system components. Essentially 14.04 wrap in a 12.04.4 kernel/drivers/modules for better 32bit support.

Performance and aesthetics are superb in LXLE. However, I encountered a few glitches that have put me continuously on the guard while using this distro: after updating the system through the software updater, I started customizing it to suit my needs. So the first thing I did was add a battery monitor to the panel, install psensor, dropbox, google chrome, vlc and a few other applications that I use on a daily basis. The next day when I booted the system, I noticed that the battery indicator has vanished from the panel. I also noticed that instead of one, now I have two network indicators. Well, with some googling I learned that I have to edit ~/.config/lxsession/Lubuntu/desktop.conf and remove the line 'network_gui/command=nm-applet'. That worked and solved the network indicator problem. The remaining issue now is that I couldn't add the battery icon thing. It's there in the “add plugin to panel” list. I click the add button but nothing happens. The battery icon wouldn't show up in the lxpanel. Is there a workaround? Please let me know? Thank you in advance.

That was Lubuntu's fault, they updated lxsession, even after I warned them of the bug, they then released another update (probably backtracked). The bug caused ~/.config/autostart to be ignored and /etc/xdg/autostart directory to load everything. In other words, it didn't have to happen but did. You could have solved the double network icon but unselecting 'network' in 'default applications for lxsession' I had to tackle a bunch of 'bugs' in lubuntu 14.04 and the network icon was one of them. Which is why after the 'update' you had two. Glad you figured it out, as for the battery icon, not sure, but conky reports its anyway. :)

Thank you Arindam. Thank you Ronnie. I've solved the battery monitor issue. It was my mistake. I have the habit of removing the battery and plugging my laptop to the electric socket when I'm working at home. So naturally the battery monitor would not be there in the panel when the battery was removed. It showed up again when I placed the battery back into the laptop. I'm sorry for the inconvenience that I have caused by reporting a “false positive”. Now I'm wondering about a way to place a “shutdown” button on the panel. Any suggestions will be hugely appreciated.

LXLE's slower boot time is due to the use of 'preload' this system component is used to enable faster loading of commonly used apps once you reach the desktop, its not really slower at startup because its not as good or something is wrong, its slower on boot because its loading a feature that will speed up your use of the computer once you hit the desktop.

Yes, all 32-bit version of any Linux OS supports older architecture. By PAE what they mean is that it will work if your RAM is greater than 4 GB. Non-PAE versions are unable to detect more than 4 GB RAM. What are the specs of the system where you want to install Linux?

The system has a P4 1.7Ghz processor and 1.5 Gb's of ram.When I tried installing Elementary Os Luna 32-bit it showed Please use a pae enabled cpu and Peppermint OS % didnt't even boot just a black screen.

great review, really caught my attention! I am using openSUSE and can easily install LXDE but this really made me think about the advantages of installing LXLE on older machines. They seem to do a very thorough job of taking LXDE a step further... with a lot of care and consideration. I am not scared of rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty, so to speak, but this gets some of the groundwork done. I like Ubuntu in many ways (although Unity is not for me), so I feel ready to give this a try on some of my machines

Hi Mayuka: Given your system specs, you can run any Linux distro in the world :). Both LXLE and Mint 17.1 Cinnamon are very good distros in their own right. However, my preference would be towards Mint as it just works on any system you throw at it.

And both of them work alongside Win8.1. I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (full time) along with Win8.1 on a touchscreen laptop with dual boot. I chose Ubuntu over Mint as it supports touch better.